“Yes.”
“So did I.”
“Less.”
“But some.”
“Yes.”
“I acted like that meant I was trapped.”
Simone nodded.
“That is worth remembering.”
He looked back toward her.
“A badge gives authority.”
“It does.”
“But not permission.”
“No.”
They stood there another minute.
Then Price asked the question that had been bothering him since the roadside.
“You could have shown him your FBI credentials.”
“Yes.”
“Immediately.”
“Yes.”
“He probably would have backed off.”
“Probably.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
Simone looked toward her black Tahoe parked beneath a tree.
The damaged liftgate lock had been replaced months earlier.
The old mechanism remained sealed in an evidence bag at the field office until the case concluded.
Afterward, property staff asked whether she wanted it disposed of.
She took it home instead.
Not as a trophy.
As a reminder.
“I wanted to know what he would do if he believed I was just a woman driving through his county.”
Price looked at her.
“A Black woman.”
Simone met his eyes.
“Yes.”
The department’s later traffic review had given that detail weight she did not need to exaggerate.
Mercer’s assumptions had never been written plainly enough to quote.
But Simone remembered how quickly he decided her refusal meant suspicion.
How easily her insistence on a warrant became “behavior.”
She continued:
“If I showed him the badge, he might have respected my authority.”
“That wouldn’t tell me whether he respected the law.”
Price nodded slowly.
“Turns out somebody powerful was watching.”
Simone shook her head.
“That is still not the lesson.”
“What is?”
“The law is supposed to protect you before anyone knows whether you are powerful.”
She looked toward the firefighters.
“If the only reason someone gets treated correctly is because the officer discovers they have status, then the system has already failed.”
Price absorbed that.
Simone started toward her SUV.
“Agent Carter.”
She turned.
“What would have happened if Mercer had accepted your refusal?”
Simone considered.
“We would have kept investigating.”
“How long?”
“Maybe weeks.”
“Maybe months.”
“You still would have gotten him?”
“I don’t know.”
Price smiled slightly.
“So opening the trunk destroyed him.”
Simone opened the driver door.
“No.”
He waited.
She looked back.
“Thinking he had the right to open it did.”
Then she climbed in.
The story did not end with the trial.
Westbridge still had to live with what came after.
Trust did not return because a sheriff went to prison.
It returned unevenly.
Slowly.
Some residents remained suspicious of the replacement leadership.
Some defended Mercer years after his conviction.
Some people who had distrusted the department before the case saw every deputy as complicit.
Denise Holloway pushed against both simplifications.
At roll call one morning, after a deputy complained that the public “treated everyone here like criminals now,” she stopped the meeting.
“You want the community to distinguish you from Mercer?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Then give them evidence.”
The deputy frowned.
“What evidence?”
“Your work.”
“Every day.”
“Every report.”
“Every stop.”
“Every time somebody irritates you and you still remember the badge does not belong to your temper.”